“Oh, you’ll like this, too, Sue,” she said.
“Like what?” Sue asked as she placed the translucent tumblers with worn Pepsi logos on the table.
“This joke,” Piper said. Sue waited patiently. “So this man passed a pet store, and the sign in the window said ‘Talking Dog for Sale.’ Curious, the man went in and said to the dog, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ The dog said, ‘Oh, I’ve had the most marvelous life. I was born in Great Britain and worked as a service dog in the Royal Guard, helping protect the Queen herself, and then I moved to the Alps, where I spent years rescuing avalanche victims, and now I spend my days with the owner of this store, curled at his feet by the fire at night, reading to him.’ Flabbergasted, the man turned to the owner and said, ‘What an amazing dog. Why on earth would you want to get rid of him?’ And the owner said, ‘Because he’s a liar! He never did any of that. He can’t even read.’”
Sue chuckled and Piper sat back, pleased with herself.
“Food’ll be out soon,” Sue said, turning away from the table.
As they waited for their meals, Piper curled the length of white straw paper around her index finger and studied the tourists two tables over. “What do you think?” she whispered, cutting her eyes to the prim lady holding her purse in her lap, as if she were afraid it might get snatched at any second. When Tom didn’t respond, she said, “I’m gonna go with craft blogger, waiting to be discovered as the next Martha Stewart. She owns entirely too much decoupaged furniture—end tables, coffee tables, even the headboard of her bed. She just couldn’t stop. Her friends and family were finally forced to stage an intervention, as they couldn’t bear receiving one more Mod-Podge-and-magazine-cutout-covered flowerpot or stool or picture frame for their birthdays or Christmas.”
It was a game they’d been playing for years, sizing up the tourists visiting the island and guessing what they did—trying to top each other for the most outlandish careers or hobbies. Piper sometimes felt guilty for the inherent unkindness of the contest, but there was no malice in it, and what was the harm, she reasoned, if the people in question couldn’t hear them? She wondered what Tom’s assessment of the current woman would be—his were always so much more creative, funny, unexpected. But before she could find out, a man approached the table, standing behind the chair opposite Piper. A tourist, obviously, because Piper knew everyone on the island, and this was a stranger. But even for a tourist, he was peculiarly dressed. Aside from the damp spots at the shoulders of his white button-up, it looked like he was about to attend a business meeting. Or church. But on Frick Island, no one wore long sleeves in the dead heat of August. Not even to church.
Piper stared pleasantly up at the man, curious and patient. Perhaps he wanted to borrow their ketchup or salt. Or maybe he was going to ask if she was an actress. It had happened once before, a few years earlier, and when she said no, the tourist was embarrassed and she never got the chance to ask which actress. On the off chance that this man was going to ask her the same thing, she resolved that this time, she would find out.
* * *
—
Anders cleared his throat, feeling a little out of body and unable to recall the short walk that had propelled him from the bar to this table, where he stood now in front of the curly-headed woman with the perfect bow-shaped mouth. In the fifteen minutes that had passed since he first laid eyes on her when she walked into the restaurant, Anders had spent twelve of them eating his chicken fingers in silence and not giving any more thought to the woman who had caught his eye. But then, his waiter dropped off a rolled napkin—a little late considering he was halfway done with his meal—and Anders unrolled it to find a knife and a spork. He stared at the hybrid instrument—part fork, part spoon—and he couldn’t help it, he thought of Celeste.
He thought of how she squealed, “A spork!” and held up the utensil that came with her order at KFC one night, on a mashed potato study break. “God—I used to love these when I was a kid.” It stuck with Anders, because he never considered that he would be attracted to someone who squealed over plastic cutlery.
And then he remembered—in that shocking, painful way that happens after a breakup, like being blindsided by a sucker punch—that he would most likely not ever be hearing her squeal about sporks again. That honor now belonged to the infectious disease major with coiffed hair and a dog named Lola.
That was when he turned his head slightly and caught sight of the woman, now sitting two tables behind him. She was alone and appeared to be talking to herself, which may have put off some men but only charmed Anders further. His sister’s voice echoed in his head—You need to get out of your comfort zone—and after some hemming and hawing, that was what actually stood him up on his two feet and made him do something as dumb (in retrospect) and out of character as attempt to—what, hit on her? No, no, he certainly wasn’t hitting on anyone. But walk over and speak to the woman who so piqued his interest.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked now, when seconds had ticked by and Anders had not volunteered any explanation as to why he was standing there.
Anders, who didn’t do much of anything without planning out every single detail, cursed himself for not coming up with an opening line, and then cursed Frick Island for being dry, because he couldn’t even do something as banal and cliché as offer to buy her a drink. “I just, um . . .” he stammered. His eyes flitted from the girl’s expectant gaze to her wild hair and then to the table, where they landed on a pillar of salt and he was buoyed with inspiration. “May I borrow your salt?”
“Of course,” she said, nodding toward the shaker on the table. Anders picked it up but didn’t immediately turn back to the bar. He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nostrils. He tightened his grip on the salt. Then he opened his eyes and said, “Do you want to join me?”
The woman paused, lifting an eyebrow. “Join you?”
Heat rushed into Anders’s face. “You know, to eat. At the bar. I don’t really know anyone and I just thought . . .”
The woman glanced at the chair next to her and then back at Anders, her eyes round, a pink slowly tingeing her cheeks. “I’m here with my husband.” Her voice was still kind, but a tightness belied it, as if she were apologetic but also appalled— as if Anders should have known she was not alone. And that was when Anders noticed the thin gold band on her ring finger. Anders had always prided himself on his keen observation skills—it was one of the things, if not the thing, that made him such an excellent journalist. How did he not see the ring before?
“Oh, I’m . . . I didn’t . . .” He stumbled backward from the table. “Of course, yes. Enjoy your dinner,” he managed, and turned toward the bar, wishing the slats of the floor would open up and swallow him whole, while chiding himself for actually taking his kid sister’s advice. When had she ever been right about anything? He slid onto the barstool in front of his half-eaten chicken fingers and looked up for his server, hoping to get the check as fast as humanly possible so he could just leave. Surprisingly, the waiter was standing right in front of him, wearing a large grin.